For a word that’s used so often it seems pretty ill-defined. My chemistry isn’t great but I believe in the chemical sense an organic compound is a complex carbon-based molecule, usually like a chain of CH bonds with some nitrogen and oxygen thrown in there. (Again, chemistry really isn’t my area. )
But when people talk about organic food I understand it even less than in the chemical sense. It seems like it usually means something along the lines of it not having additives or preservatives, but does that have anything to do with whether those ingredients are “organic” or not? Is it two entirely different uses of the word, or is there some relation?
In: Chemistry
It’s a marketing term.
There is no one single guideline to what “organic” means and no governing body that insures that anything that is called organic meets that guideline.
As a general rule, it means that food was grown w/out artificial or lab made weed killers, bug killers, hormones, or antibiotics. But even then, you can’t prevent things like wind carrying weed killer across a field, or rainwater transporting these things, or cross pollination between a so called “organic” field and a non-organic field.
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